another factor could so easily be that I was only 1/3 restoration spec.
I’m going to have to get off the fence and decide, Restoration or Enhancement. At the moment I’m only “talented” enough in the Resto tree for an off healer, and they don’t really exist in 5 man groups. I could backup heal, when the healer dies, but I don’t think I’m mentally flexible enough to make such a large change midst fight.

I think I will respec as Full Restoration, this will mean quite a change to my playing. I’ll have to do more instances for XP since I’ll find questing slower. I’ll need to be able to devote longer periods at one time to playing rather than hopping on for an hour and a bit every night. Ideally I’d find a questing buddy and regular instance group.

Update:

I’ve done some playing on warcrafter.net with the talent tool and I’ve got the following numbers out of it, this is wearing my “healing gear”:

Talentless Current Resto

Lesser Healing Wave HpM 2.6 2.8 3

Heal 1000 1063 1134

HPS (inc crit) 695.4 756.3 803.6

Healing Wave HpM 3.2 3.4 3.6

Heal 2088 2212 2365

HPS (inc crit) 725.6 944.7 1005

Chain Heal HpM 2 2.2 2.7

Heal 849 952 1170

HPS 353.9 406.7 497.4

Chain Heal (2 targets) HpM 3 3.3 4.05

Heal 1273.5 1428 1755

HPS 530.85 610.05 746.1

Chain Heal (3 targets) HpM 3.5 3.85 4.725

Heal 1485.75 1666 2047.5

HPS 619.325 711.725 870.45

This is absolutely not as I expected. The rough differences between my current build and a full restoration are:

So to me, this means that not going Resto will gimp my single target healing spells by about 8%. Of course this does mean I don’t get the desirable Chain Heal boost, nor Earth Shield nor Mana Spring.
On the other hand, respeccing only costs gold (50g to try it and switch back) and will definitely give me some practice at what is likely to be my end-game role. 50 Gold is about 1/3 of my savings so it’s not chicken feed, then again it will change the game, and let me know if I really want to go resto at the end.